The organization has been opposed by many activist groups, including the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, who have called for a boycott of brands with ties to the group, made a point of questioning the group’s role in U.S. politics, and even spoofed an NRA spokesperson. Still, the NRA is continuing to press for controversial legislation while trying to fight reform efforts.

Unsurprisingly, North is no stranger to controversy himself. Here’s what you need to know about the NRA’s new president.

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis after studying “low-intensity conflict.”

North attended the State University of New York at Brockport for two years before transferring to the Naval Academy, according to an American Legion profile. The New York Times reported that a young North took a popular class on communism and revolutionary wars, which some classmates later speculated furthered his interest in “low-intensity conflict,” a term that encompasses action outside of full-scale warfare from peace enforcement to intelligence gathering to guerrilla warfare.

He was the star character witness for a Marine accused of killing 16 civilians during the Vietnam War.

After graduating from Annapolis, North served in the Marines and was deployed to Vietnam for 11 months, where he eventually became a platoon commander and won several medals, including the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts, according to the Times.

The Los Angeles Times reported that North voluntarily returned to Vietnam from the United States to serve as a character witness for the 1970 trial of Lance Corporal Randall Herrod, who served under North’s command in Vietnam. Herrod was accused, along with five other marines, of killing 11 women and five children in the country’s Queson Valley, as a clip from the New York Times archive details.

He’s best known for the Iran-Contra scandal and his ties to President Ronald Reagan.

In the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese publicly confirmed that proceeds from weapons secretly sold to Iran were illegally used to fund the Contras, a group of rebels involved in a war against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government, Politico noted.

Prior to that November 25 revelation, reports had surfaced in Lebanese magazine Al Shiraa that U.S. government officials were helping to facilitate arms sales to Iran, despite a U.S. embargo prohibiting arms sales to the country, according to a 1988 New York Times timeline of the scandal. Politico’s 30th-anniversary piece on the scandal details how the arm sales were believed by some to be an effort by the Reagan administration to facilitate the release of seven American hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups — despite a U.S. arms embargo against Iran and President Reagan’s prohibition on negotiating with terrorists. The money was used to support the anti-Communist Contra rebels, which violated the 1982 Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited the use of American federal funds for “overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.”

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At the center of this was North, who, in his role as deputy director of the National Security Council, helped figure out the exact amount of U.S. weaponry each hostage in Lebanon was worth, according to a 1987 Los Angeles Times article.

North testified before Congress in 1987 and was convicted in 1989 on three felony counts, which included seeking to keep the truth from Congress, shredding government documents, and accepting a $14,000 bribe in the form of a security fence, according to a 1989 report from The Guardian.

The New York Times reported that he was sentenced to 1,200 hours of community service, three years’ suspended sentence, and a $150,000 fine. Charges against him were dismissed in 1991 by a federal judge, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Speaking on Fox’s Fox and Friends program Tuesday morning, North said, “This is a time when you need a marine at the top of the pyramid at the National Rifle Association. It’s under attack.”

In a statement, Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the NRA is "doubling down on a polarizing leadership style that serves only the interests of gun manufacturers at the expense of real American freedom — the right to live life without fear of being shot.” The statement also said, “Oliver North’s very name is synonymous with corruption and disgrace.”